Miriam and I lingered at an inn in Savoy, awaiting the day when we
must go to Geneva. The place in which we found ourselves was so very
fair--such high, green slopes, such woods of chestnuts, so blue, so
mountain-pure a lake, such gracious, stately mountain shapes crowned
with white wreaths! We walked great distances, we lay in the long,
sweet grass, ate the bread we brought with us, and drank from our one
flask wine of the country. On a certain day we walked to a small
gray village high above the lake, under a splendid mountain wall.
There, with a definite tone of strangeness, fitness, sweetness, whom
should I meet again but the little, wrinkled man with the book of
verse who had sat down beside me on the train from Landon, years and
years ago, when I would go to Africa?
We found him in the churchyard, sitting meditatively among the dark
crosses. I stood before him, looking down into his eyes that were
remarkably limpid, past trouble and deep. He put up a hand. "Wait a
moment until I steady, until I steady the glass! ... You sat beside
me on a train in the South. We talked. You were poet, too. Yes!
... I told you that we'd meet again!"
He was traveling with a party whom he must, presently, rejoin at the
nearest large town. "I've just another day in this country. I
walked up here from ----."
I told him who was Miriam, and Miriam how the two of us had met. He
gave us his name, "Allen--Christopher Allen." We walked through the
village that was a tiny place, and we sat under a great fir with the
mountain towering behind us, and the lake thrown below like a
sapphire. Four or five children, walking on the road, stood still,
then came shyly over to us. They had berries, which we bought, and
they answered questions; then one, quite suddenly, said: "I know the
story of the place. Do you want me to tell it to you?"
She told it in a wild-bird way, on a treble note, a legend half
pagan, half Christian. It ran now a grim and now a delectable
phantasy. She finished. We applauded the legend, her art and her
kindness. A bell rang, sweet in the distance. As though it were
some understood signal, the children bobbed and bowed to us and ran
away down the road. Where they had been a friendly dog appeared and
came to be patted. Then a sweet bird sang, and a butterfly with a
coat of many colors sailed to and from a tall flower. We heard the
drone of bees; ants at our feet went by in a line. The odor of the
mountain world was in our nostrils, sun entered our very hearts.
Our tongues uttered few words. The inner world was shining, ringing,
loving. We loved this place and all places. We loved these beasts,
walking, creeping, and flying, and all beasts walking, creeping, and
flying up the Time-road out of beasthood. We loved the children and
all children wherever they might be under the four winds. We loved
the world--oh, bright and dark, we loved the world!
Said Miriam, in a low voice: "We are coming to the waters' meet.
Don't you hear the great sea?"
The man of ancient days, and he had again with him a book of verse,
sat gazing with us and we with him at the blue lake. Joy from within
out makes beauty, love from within out makes goodness, wisdom from
within out makes knowledge and power, motion from within out makes
event. All the music of the world plays for the coming of
intuitional life.
The scene about us rested, but a thousand more rolled in, wave on
wave ... mass sense of an exhaustless ocean rolling to eternity.
Memory waked and saw all her far homes, far and near, near and far.
We remembered ourself, and ourself was the world. World past, world
present, world to come. World past we held the clearest--world
present was a sound, a thrill, a grief, a gladness--world to come was
radiance.
The throb, the vision, the voice of understanding, passed on, wave
form. We three had shared the impact.... How to teach that the
thought has muscle and moves, that the dream and the vision go forth,
that desire and will, that the image and the deed and the life are
circulatory!
I had not spoken aloud, but the man beside me took with ease my
thought. He carried it on, speaking with his eyes upon a flower
which his hand moved to and fro: "There's not a desire nor
determination, nor mood, nor thought, nor aspiration, intuition,
super-thought, nor feeling that is not public, general, common goods!
Where's the wall just now between the minds of us sitting here? If
in old life there seemed a wall, new life flies over it, runs through
it! _Share and share alike. All we are one_.... That, just now,
was a lovely glow from to-morrow--warmth from heaven, breeze from
home! Going up to the One. But for long, for very long, my friend,
it may almost seem forever, we shall find in One a society!"
"I shall not quarrel there. It is all one."
"It is all music," said Miriam.
We went down the lake, over the happy roads to the inn. Going, there
held a sense of exquisiteness, of harmonious movement throughout
humanity, quintessential pleasantness of vast give and take, infinite
variousness of liking. The intensity of the glow up there on the
mountain receded--the strong, aromatic breeze from home passed on.
But for all that they seemed to pass and seemed to recede, was left
as ever a knowledge, a lift, a treasure of leaven! Wider and wider,
higher and higher, subtler and subtler grows the brain.
The new-old companion stayed with us through the day and evening. In
the morning he must go to join those others with whom also he was
traveling.
We walked by the lake. There shone a young moon, and breathed around
a dry, healthful air, wave-break of delicate odors, delicate sounds.
Those over-perceptions, upon the shore of whose vast plane and order
we had come, gave us of their new, their delicious flowers and
fruits. Blossom after blossom, purple cluster, gold orb, they fell
in our way.
In the morning, very early, Miriam and I were up to see the comrade
go. How many comrades we were gathering, finding--were gathering,
finding us! ... Delicate and strange are the ways of the All.
He walked away in the coral light. We had coffee and rolls together,
with simple talk of mountains, roads, and towns. He went away who
did not go; we stayed who also went.
Miriam that morning had letters to write. I walked to a fir wood
sloping upward. The ground lay all purple, brown, and clean.
Innumerable pillars ranged themselves, strong and high, while there
sprang overhead a deep and marvelous roof, moving, fragrant. I lay
down among strong roots, on the purple ground. There was stillness,
and yet the ineffable, whispering surf.
It was to-day a surf of recollection....
Every one is Satan and every one is Christ and every one is that
third who moves from Satan into Christ.
I came full upon Royal and Dorothea--came upon them in my own nature
where they are because there is nowhere else for them to be.
Place, moment, expanded, extended. Here were seas of
Royal-Dorothea.... And still they were seas of myself--my seas--as
Michael and Miriam were seas of them in America, their seas, found in
their nature because there is nowhere else for them to be.... We
flowed together--then something rose out of the seas and understood
them all. _Oh, my clay that is to be given life! Oh, the all of me
that must be adventured, lived, loved, sublimed!_
There is an "I" that is to vanish, and there is an "I" that is to
come, and time is long.
I sat in the fir wood, and on every hand it passed into infinity....
And then, like soundless thunder, there was a cry, and like invisible
lightning there was a shock, a change! Miriam was with me as always
she was with me, but there was a difference felt from head to foot!
There was rending, sundering, and there was entrance.... She was not
at the inn yonder--for that one instant she had been in the fir
wood--now, I knew, I knew, she was in the realm to which you go by
the inner gate!
I ran from the wood and up the path.... She was sitting at the table
by the window, a letter to her mother under her hand. Her head was
lifted, resting so against the chair's high back. She had died in a
moment, the heart stopping--some trouble we had not guessed. Her
face wore her gipsy smile, dauntless, magical.
I buried the loved body of her by the blue lake where the mountains
reflected, where the song of birds was heard. Around it lay dust of
a mountain people.
I would not go back across the sea to Flowerfield just yet. It was
full home to Kate and Dugald. Aunt Kate and Uncle John, John and
Amy, Catherine and Lewis, all who loved Miriam, loving her still, for
she lived still and always, would find comfort ... still, still, as
stair after stair is mounted, companionship with that other mounting
spirit!
Miriam!
I wrote that I should come to Flowerfield in October.
Maxwell's whereabouts were known now to me. I wrote asking him to
meet me in Athens. I stayed a month in Savoy, by the lake, among the
mountains, in this inn, by this grave.